Is one week of no contact enough to assume ghosting

After seven days, assume they read your message. Most people check their phones multiple times per day. Some people check hundreds of times. Even busy people find five seconds to send 'hey, been swamped, talk later?' if they want to.

The silence isn't accidental. It's a choice. They might be uncertain about you, interested in someone else, going through something personal, or simply not that interested. The reason matters less than the fact that they're showing you where you stand by doing nothing. That's the message.

Do not send another text. A second message looks like you're asking for permission to matter, and it won't work. Do not check if they're active on the app or watching your stories. That's searching for hope where there isn't any.

What you should do is let it rest. Close the conversation in your head. If they come back in three weeks with an apology, you can decide then if you want to engage. But your job for the next week is to stop waiting for their reply and start looking elsewhere. This person already told you something by not responding. Believe them.

After seven days of silence, time moves differently. The odds of a reply drop off hard. After two weeks, consider it dead. After three weeks, it is dead. Do not send anything else.

The only move that makes sense is to unmatched them, delete the conversation, or mute the chat so you stop checking. This removes the hope that pops up every time your phone buzzes. In a month, when you're talking to someone new, you won't even remember why you were waiting for this person to text back.